RE: What is it about theists that make them think that personal insults win a debate?

Quote:You've never met him. You rely on other people's stories and most of those can be shown to either be stolen from other religions or require suspensions of the natural order (in your favor) to be true. You are not trusting Jesus, you have blind faith in the stories that tell you to trust Jesus.

I acknowledge what you're saying. I'm also affirming that the Bible's record--the document to be examined and criticized--is not primarily a hearsay document about Christ.

It is eyewitnesses speaking of Jesus and prophecies, therefore their trust is not blind. Their "faith" was trust in someone they knew personally.

My "faith" in the writers includes reading their testimony and discerning what I believe is their honest account. I was foreman of a jury once, and none of us were allowed to have been present at the scene or know the alleged criminal outside the court, etc. If that is your baseline judgment, our courts system needs to close down. Every court case is decided by jurors hearing witnesses and receiving forensic and other evidence secondhand.

Of course, the assumption is I read the Bible in the past or now and trust everything I read blindly without looking up secular confirmations of prophecies, praying as the Bible proscribes, testing the Lord via tithing or whatever...

I hear what you're saying, and I get it. However 1) The bible faith is not a "blind" faith. 2) My faith is reasonable, since we decide many, many things from whether George Washington existed to whether we should drink acid via second and third-party testimony, and often from books and other documents 3) A "real" Christian to me is someone who not only trusts Jesus, but goes the extra mile to test and try and see and learn.

RE: What is it about theists that make them think that personal insults win a debate?

(20-02-2013 03:53 PM)PleaseJesus Wrote:

Quote:You've never met him. You rely on other people's stories and most of those can be shown to either be stolen from other religions or require suspensions of the natural order (in your favor) to be true. You are not trusting Jesus, you have blind faith in the stories that tell you to trust Jesus.

I acknowledge what you're saying. I'm also affirming that the Bible's record--the document to be examined and criticized--is not primarily a hearsay document about Christ.

It is eyewitnesses speaking of Jesus and prophecies, therefore their trust is not blind. Their "faith" was trust in someone they knew personally.

My "faith" in the writers includes reading their testimony and discerning what I believe is their honest account. I was foreman of a jury once, and none of us were allowed to have been present at the scene or know the alleged criminal outside the court, etc. If that is your baseline judgment, our courts system needs to close down. Every court case is decided by jurors hearing witnesses and receiving forensic and other evidence secondhand.

Of course, the assumption is I read the Bible in the past or now and trust everything I read blindly without looking up secular confirmations of prophecies, praying as the Bible proscribes, testing the Lord via tithing or whatever...

I hear what you're saying, and I get it. However 1) The bible faith is not a "blind" faith. 2) My faith is reasonable, since we decide many, many things from whether George Washington existed to whether we should drink acid via second and third-party testimony, and often from books and other documents 3) A "real" Christian to me is someone who not only trusts Jesus, but goes the extra mile to test and try and see and learn.

Thanks!

We have artifacts (letters, photos etc.) and many 1st person accounts of George Washington (which the 1st hand accounts have 1st hand accounts backing them up and so on). The primary evidence is so overwhelming, we need not look to the circumstantial evidence of secondary sources for corroboration or confirmation.

Jesus has no evidence just hearsay for his existence. Use whatever word to describe this, besides rational.

Arguing with a Christian is a lot like playing chess with a pigeon. You can be the greatest player in the world, yet the pigeon will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and strut away triumphantly.

RE: What is it about theists that make them think that personal insults win a debate?

There are no first hand accounts of people who wrote about Jesus.
People that lived during that period of time who would have loved to have written about just this kind of character in the books they did write have nothing to say about him. Why is that ? It's because he's a fictional character who was created many many decades later.

Insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results